Void Marbles

'It's as if I'm suspended in a void, alone with my thoughts, ' Leroy mused, his gaze sweeping the empty expanse.

'There's nothing here besides those small stars.'

*Klang* *Kling* *Klang*

Startled, Leroy's head snapped around, his eyes darting in every direction.

Noises continued to ravage the space. They were even louder than usual, considering you couldn't hear anything else. You couldn't hear the wind, the crunching of the earth underneath your feet, or the birds in the trees; you could only hear the mechanical noise of gears turning.

Suddenly, Leroy plummeted further into the abyss of the void. The fall was unchanging in speed no matter how much time had passed, and for him, it felt like an eternity.

'These last two days sure have been nice, huh?' Leroy thought while lampooning inside.

Finally, Leroy landed on something.

Weirdly, he didn't feel any pain even after falling for such a long time from a tremendous height that he couldn't even begin to comprehend.

Glancing around himself again, he witnessed dark marble pillars extending into the sky, dark tiles on the floor that seemed to be perfectly cut into rectangles, and a woman further away in the middle of what now looked like a black marble clearing.

She was unlike any other he had seen, dressed in a black cloak with jet black hair that melded together with the void around them and extended all the way to her knees, black eyes that seemed as if they were filled with stardust inside of them, and a hat that reminiscing of one a witch would wear.

'You're finally here.'

Leroy took a step back in shock.

'She didn't speak, her mouth clearly didn't move'

'That's because we are inside your dreamscape. Everything that is happening here is inside of your head.' 

The woman thought? Said? as she moved forward. No, it would be more appropriate to say that she glided forward; her feet weren't even touching the ground.

She was now merely a few feet away from Leroy.

'You mean this is the inside of my head?' Leroy thought as he glanced around again, but this time, his eyes held a weird glint in them.

'Never thought I would be into this kind of stuff.' He quickly turned back to face the weird woman.

'And who might you be huh? What are you doing inside my head?'

'I am here merely as a messenger,' she said as she lowered her head, now staring directly into Leroy's eyes.

'messenger?' asked Leroy, trying as hard as he could not to shiver.

'Correct. The blasphemers of the sun have set up a ritual in the slums, thus isolating it completely from the outside world; in 3 days, The ritual will be finished, and everyone inside of it will die.'

'What, that's impossible, you've gotta be lying to me,' Leroy screamed at her.

'The empire would never allow for them to set up such a ritual in the first place, and even if they did, then they would most definitely come and save us all,' 

Leroy said to the woman while clenching his fists; even though his true body wasn't here and thus he didn't need air, he felt like his lungs couldn't take in enough of it.

'That's a lie, and you know it as well; since when did the empire care about the slums? Not only are you not considered as humans, but to the empire, the people of the slums do not exist. Now listen to me closely if you want to survive-'

'Who are you? Why me?' Leroy interrupted her. This time, his eyes weren't trembling, nor were his hands shaking; he had a fierce look as if he wanted to tear everything in front of him.

'You don't need to know who I am, considering you are most likely to be dead by the end of the week. As for why you? It's simply because everyone else has already died; quite frankly, I'm quite unsure why you are still alive.'

'What? they're dead!' Leroy wanted to cry; he wanted to bawl his eyes out; there simply was no way that the old man and Arthur were dead, heck, even Ivar and John.

'Shut up and listen,' The woman said as she raised her left hand.

At that exact moment, the entire void trembled around them; Leroy started feeling as if his neck was getting strangled; he started fumbling his arms and legs to escape, but no matter what he did, he just couldn't escape.

The woman lowered her hand, and Leroy felt like he could finally breathe. This was terrifying, even though he technically didn't need air in his dreams.

'When you wake up from this dream, you'll find a monocle on top of your chest. That is the only way for you to be able to see the ritualistic magic around you. First, you're going to look for someone, anyone, and with the monocle, you should be able to see a red thread connected to their body. After that, follow the thread to its source, and you will be able to find a magic artifact in the shape of a crystal orb. After destroying that, then, the ritual will end.'

'Does that mean I can save everyone?' Leroy asked excitedly.

'No, if you have a thread attached to you, then you are simply a shell already, merely a puppet for the artifact to control, and that brings up the next point, under no circumstances are you to try talking about this with anyone else inside of there, everyone is already the magic artifacts puppet but as it doesn't have high enough intelligence, they will only follow simply orders as praising the Sun God as well as attacking anyone that isn't one of them'

'You don't mean... if I mess up, then the entire slums will be coming for me?' Leroy's excitement had already fallen to rock bottom; his own family would hunt him down if they found out; that would mean fighting to the death with them.

'That's right if you get found out, then you are dead; there is simply no way that you can escape thousands of people.'

As soon as those words were finished, the entire space started shaking. The long pillars fell down and broke, while the floor underneath them disintegrated into particles.

'What's going on?' Leroy shouted as he tried to maintain his footing, but it was useless as soon there would be no place left to stand.

'You're waking up. This is the end of our conversation. If after three days the barrier doesn't go down, then I'm going to have to destroy everything inside, no matter if you are alive or not,' said the woman, her face as expressionless as when he first saw her.

In those few moments, the entire marble structure had disappeared, and Leroy started falling down once more. This time, the surroundings were starting to lighten up, and they were doing so fast that it felt like it had happened in a flash.

"Aaaaghh!" Leroy woke up immediately after.

"That was one weird ass dream, huff," He said and then swiped his forehead with his sleeve to remove the sweat; as he was doing that, he looked at his lap as he had sat up immediately after waking up.

On top of his lap lay a simple monocle.